


Home To Me

by Jmeelee



Series: This Must Be the Place [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cemetery, Gun Violence, Happy Ending, Kissing, M/M, Original Character Death(s), Parades, Reunion, rebuilding Hale house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 20:17:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10974600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jmeelee/pseuds/Jmeelee
Summary: Sequel to In This Abyss“Are you real?” Stiles whispers.“As real as you are,” Derek answers back.The confused EMT glances back and forth between the three men.  “You know him?” She asks Stiles, motioning toward Derek.Do I know him?Stiles asks himself.  It’s been ten years with no word.  How did Derek find him?  How did he know where Stiles was, that he was in trouble?  Those questions, and so many more, need to be answered.  But the answers can wait, for now.“Yes,” he tells the poor, confused EMT.  “Yes, I know him.”





	Home To Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Derekhles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derekhles/gifts).



> This story probably won't make sense unless you read [In This Abyss](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10922721) first. Title for this story came from the song "Home To Me" by Josh Kelly, and both works in this series were heavily influenced by The Lumineers song, "This Must Be the Place."

A week after Stiles freaks out over seeing a faux-Derek on the streets of San Francisco, a bureaucratic clerical error allows Cathy’s ex-husband a sudden and mistaken release on parole. He immediately leaves a strangled kitten on the doorstep of the shelter Cathy is staying at, with a note tied around its broken neck: _You’re next, bitch._  


That night, too terrified to stay at the shelter, she sits on Stiles’s couch in a faded t-shirt and jeans, sipping a lukewarm cup of Earl Grey tea with shaking hands. She watches Stiles double check the bolts on the duplexes front and back doors.  


“Don’t worry. You will be safe here tonight,” he promises. “Off to Sacramento tomorrow, living it up in a nice hotel courtesy of the police. They will round him up so fast you won’t even have time for sightseeing.” He is laying it on thick, praying his optimism is justified.  


“Why are you doing all this for me, Stiles?” she asks wistfully.  


He waves his beer bottle half-heartedly toward a wall of framed Press Association awards. “You’re my ticket to a Pulitzer.”  


She levels him with a bullshit detecting glare.  


He sighs. “Your story needs to be told. I feel very strongly about that. I just want to help. Helping has always been my _thing_ , and maybe I am finally getting good at it.”  


She looks him over. “I don’t get you, Stiles. I’ve known you for six months. You are always writing about beat-up women or runaway kids, but you don’t have a spouse or kids of your own. You care so much about strangers, but you never talk about your own family.”  


He laughs. “I have a family, a great family. They live in Beacon Hills. I guess I’ve never felt the need to settle down, with a man or a woman. And why subject a spouse or child to my ADHD? No one likes a distracted partner and father.”  


Cathy shakes her head, smiling fondly. “Well, I could use some distraction right about now. My nerves are shot to hell.” She stands from the couch and begins to wander around his home, skimming her fingertips over picture frames and book spines, assessing his life from the smattering of clues he leaves scattered around. She pauses at his desk, where she picks up a digital photo frame that is cycling through uploaded images.  


The frame is an impractical Christmas gift from his father that he doesn’t have the heart to throw away. His father had sent it preloaded with photos; a challenge, a plea, a guilt-inducing sentiment. If Stiles won’t come back to Beacon Hills to visit, then his father is making sure Beacon Hills comes to him. Pictures flash by every few seconds: his father in his brown sheriff's uniform, Scott’s daughter in her Daisy Scout outfit, Melissa hugging Stiles, Kira and Scott at their wedding, smiling into each other’s eyes.  


“Is this your family?” she asks.  


“Yes. That’s my father and stepmother. And that’s my best-friend Scott, who is now technically my step brother, and his wife and daughter.”  


“You don’t have anyone special?”  


He resolutely does _not_ picture Derek’s face. “Nah, no one right now. I’ve been around, but no one serious.”  


“Well, that’s too bad, but it looks like you have a great family. You must miss them. Do you visit home a lot?”  


“I moved out when I went to college in San Francisco. I don’t go back much. Just holidays and weddings. Work keeps me busy.” _And sad memories keep me away,_ he adds silently.  


She puts the frame down, and comes back to the couch to sit beside Stiles with a melancholy sigh. “If I had a big family, or any family, I’d be in the middle of them right now, counting my blessings. You are lucky.”  


Stiles puts his beer down on the coffee table and reaches over, taking her hand. “You _are_ going to have a family, Cathy. A home, a good husband and children someday, I promise.”  


“I never believed anyone’s promises before. But now I know I can get through this-” she nervously glances out the apartment window- “because I know people really do want to help. Because you care.”  


Stiles grunts and shrugs, self-deprecating. “All you needed was a little publicity and a push in the right direction. I’m sorry it had to be you, but I hope that people knowing what you went through will help other women who find themselves in similar situations.”  


The front door of the apartment complex slams from below, and heavy footsteps start climbing the stairs to Stiles's second story landing. Cathy’s face turns white and her hand grips his so tight his knuckles ache. Stiles laughs to cover the lurch of his heart. “Relax, Cathy. It’s just the lawyer that lives in the apartment next door. This is the time he usually gets home.”  


“He walks awfully hard for a lawyer.”  


“Maybe he lost a case,” Stiles jokes. “Look, your ex won’t find you here. He has no idea where you are.”  


The footsteps grow louder, faster.  


“It’s him, Stiles,” she whispers frantically. The footsteps stop in front of his apartment. The doorknob rattles. Cathy gasps.  


“I know you’re in there you little cunt!”  


“It’s him!” Cathy screams. “Stiles we have to get out of here.”  


After years of his youth living in fear, it’s an uncomfortable throwback to feel the odd, icy calm his body produces in the face of danger. “Grab my cell phone off the coffee table,” he commands in a soft voice as he stands and heads toward his bedroom. “Call 911.”  


His front door shakes with violent blows that rattle the windows. Stiles takes off at a run for the bedroom to grab the loaded revolver he keeps locked up and stocked with regular and wolfsbane bullets.  


“I told you I’d always find you, bitch! You filthy slut! I knew you were fucking that reporter. I’m going to kill you both!”  


“He’ll get in. He’ll _get_ me.” Cathy is frozen in terror, wild-eyed, when Stiles rushes back into the living room.  


“Call the police,” he repeats as the door vibrates with a series of violent thuds, the flimsy door lock straining under the assault. “Nine, one-” Stiles never finishes the sentence, because Cathy’s ex husband blows the lock off his door with a semi-automatic.  


He bursts into the apartment, immediately locking hateful eyes on Cathy. Stiles raises his revolver, flips the safety off, the moves practiced and smooth, but he is not fast enough. It is a running theme in his very human existence. He has never been enough.  


“Oh Jesus, “ Cathy moans. A bullet hits her straight in the chest.  


Stiles fires, hitting her attacker in the upper arm, but he doesn’t drop the gun. He turns on Stiles, and everything becomes eerily silent, the dim lights in his apartment suddenly too bright.  


As Cathy’s ex husband raises his gun again, aiming for Stiles’s face, he spares a moment to think _this is going to kill my father_. After all the monsters Stiles has survived, the fact that he will die by the hand of this piece of human garbage is intolerable. Cathy is sprawled on the floor at the foot of the couch, twitching in the throes of death, a thin line of blood trickling from her lips.  


Stiles cocks the hammer of his gun, and the husband’s rifle wavers at the sound, so deafening in the silence. He stares at Stiles, time slowing to a sinister crawl. Stiles sees it, the moment Cathy’s ex changes his mind, eyes already dead as he lifts the gun from its position and places it in his own mouth, pulling the trigger. Stiles drops to the floor, his knees giving out as the dead man’s blood and brain matter paint Stiles’s living room wall.  


He crawls over the headless body to Cathy, who has gone completely still, brown eyes unseeing. “I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispers to the young woman he had promised to help. Nausea sweeps over him as he cradles her head in his lap, stroking her blonde curls. An image swims unbidden to the forefront of his mind, of Derek holding Erica’s lifeless body. A different girl, a different lifetime, but the stab of pain is the same.  


“I’m sorry,” he repeats over and over, a forlorn mantra, until the police and EMS walk through his shattered door. 

+++

 

One of the EMTs takes him outside, away from the gore of the crime scene and to preserve evidence. He sits on the back of the ambulance, his legs dangling as she inspects him. His eyes keep darting to the flashing lights reflecting off her emergency vest as her blue-gloved hands poke and prod him, searching for signs of injury.  


“I’m not hurt,” he tells her again, when she asks for the third time if he would like to go to the hospital to be examined further. He pulls the red blanket she gives him tight around his shoulders, trying to stem his shivering so she doesn’t insist on sending him. “My father is on his way. I just want to wait here until he arrives. It shouldn’t be long now, maybe half an hour.” Probably less, if the sheriff is driving one of the precinct cars. Stiles imagines his dad tearing up the interstate, lights and sirens blazing, and it brings a small smile to his face, his first in the hours since Cathy has died.  


The nice young EMT shines a flashlight into his eyes once more, then pats his arm softly after she removes her gloves. “Well, other than a touch of shock, which is to be expected, you seem to be fine, Mr. Stilinski. But if anything changes, I want you to go to the hospital at once, or call an ambulance.”  


“I will,” he promises. He glances over her shoulder, searching the dark for his father, and that’s when he sees Derek, wearing a leather jacket and standing in the shadows.  


“Oh God,” Stiles cries, and throws his hands over his eyes, promptly bursting into tears.  


“What? What is it?!” the EMT yells, startled at his outburst.  


“I’m insane, I’m going fucking insane,” he whimpers. _This can’t be happening_. Physically, Stiles is okay, but mentally he is so _fucked_. He is hallucinating a teenage fantasy and nightmare. He can not deal with heartbreaking delusions of Derek right now.  


“Mr. Stilinski, what’s wrong?” He can hear her snapping on another pair of latex gloves as he hides his head in his hands and sobs like a baby. “Are you in pain? Is it your head? Sir, you need to step back while I see to my patient. Sir! I asked you to step back.” At first Siles thinks she is speaking to him, then her words cut through the fog in his head, taking shape but not making sense.  


_What the hell?_ Stiles hiccups a breath, and parts his fingers. Standing behind the EMT is Derek, his face carved out against the night, eyes boring straight into Stiles’s. She stands and turns to face him fully. “Sir, you need to back up, right now.” She is speaking to Derek, she sees him too. It shakes the air from his lungs.  


Stiles takes his wet hands away from his tear stained face. Derek is standing before him, hands shoved into the pockets of his tight jeans, looking pale and tortured. _He’s alive. He’s come. He didn’t forget me._ And just like that, Stiles is sixteen again, sunlight filtering through the canopy of leaves in the preserve as he looks at the most beautiful man he has ever seen. And like that day so many years ago, Stiles has found himself once again unknowingly standing on a precipice, teetering toward tragedy.  


Derek steps in front of the EMT, places himself directly in front of Stiles. He lifts a devastatingly familiar hand, touches Stiles’s face with the tips of his fingers, scalds him with a look that has Stiles feeling hot all over, chills disappearing.  


“Are you real?” Stiles whispers.  


“As real as you are,” Derek answers back.  


Just then, his father walks up, coming to stand beside Derek. “Stiles,” he gasps, the relief at finding his son physically in one piece apparent in his breathless tone. Then he truly looks at Stiles, see how mentally mangled he is in this moment, and turns to his left, finally noticing who is standing beside him. “What the hell? Derek Hale, is that you, son?”  


The confused EMT glances back and forth between the three men. “You know him?” She asks Stiles, motioning toward Derek.  


_Do I know him?_ Stiles asks himself. It’s been ten years with no word. How did Derek find him? How did he know where Stiles was, that he was in trouble?  
Those questions, and so many more, need to be answered. But the answers can wait, for now.  


“Yes,” he tells the poor, confused EMT. “Yes, I know him.”

+++

 

And so, Stiles comes home to Beacon Hills, to his father’s home, to his childhood bedroom that his father never converted into a guest room, no matter how many times Stiles told him to. Derek follows Stiles back to Beacon Hills. He shows up on Stiles doorstep every day.  


“Why didn’t you ever let anyone know where you were? Who are you now? Where the hell have you been?” Stiles demands, both elated and bitterly angry.  


“Come out to the old Hale house,” Derek requests. “I have something to show you, something that will answer all your questions.”  


“I can’t right now,” Stiles stalls. He isn’t ready to leave the peace and security of his father’s home. “I will, soon, but not yet.”  


“When you’re ready, you know where to find me.” Derek turns to leave, and Stiles fights the desperate and pitiful urge to latch his fingers into the sleeve of Derek’s jacket, haul him up to his bedroom and never let Derek out of his sight again.  


“Well that’s something new, anyway,” Stiles says meanly, emotions raging inside him. “Being able to find you.” He regrets the words the minute he says them, wants to grab them out of the air and force them back into his treacherous mouth. But Derek just reaches out and grabs Stiles’s hand, squeezing his fingers in gentle contemplation. A decade of unanswered questions lay between them, but under them all is still the unpolished current, ripe and provocative, that has flowed through the foundation of their friendship since Stiles was sixteen.  


They are still looking at each other through a haze of smoke and mirrors, and everyone they know will say it's a bad idea to do this so soon, but Stiles doesn't give a damn what anyone says or thinks. He is the first to lean forward, kissing the stubbled edge of Derek’s jaw. Derek bends his head and they share a breath. Very slowly, their lips come together, gentle at first, but quickly becoming a frantic welcome and declaration, consuming the liquid world between them.  


Stiles is the first to lean forward, but Derek is the first to break away. “When you are ready, come see me,” Derek repeats, running callused hands down Stiles’s back, leaving gooseflesh in their wake. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

++++

 

He watches the coverage of Cathy’s funeral on the news, unable to bring himself to go. He hasn’t left his father’s house in two weeks, he just wanders from his bedroom to the kitchen, and makes himself meals he can barely eat.  


The camera man spends most of his time interviewing the picketers at the gates of the cemetery, their poster board signs flashing across the screen. 

_Male Government = Dead Women_  
_Guns Kill_  
_Women of color are the real victims_  
_11,766 American women murdered by partners from 2002-2012. That’s double the amount of casualties lost during war_

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered from where he is kneeling on the floor in front of the television. “They’ve turned this into a fucking political convention.” The sheriff walks over, turns off the screen. Stiles looks up into his father’s stricken face. “It’s a media circus dad, and I caused it.” His throat tightens with grief and guilt and anger. The scent of lush, growing grass wafts in through an open window, the fresh scent so full of life it makes him feel sick.  


He can see Melissa standing in the kitchen doorway, worriedly twisting her hands as the sheriff kneels on the carpet next to him. “You got caught up in a story that nearly killed you. You were trying to help. You didn’t do anything wrong.”  


Stiles points to the now blank screen. “Nothing is sacred anymore. I stuck a microphone in her face and the world peered in to see her tragedy. I told people she was important news, and they believed me. I sold her out. I didn’t help her, I painted a bullseye on her chest. Now the world feels like they own a piece of her, and she’ll never be put to rest.”  


His father looks at him, mournful and pitying, like Stiles is made of fragile glass, and his misery sinks down a little deeper inside. His father reaches out, gently cups Stiles’s cheek. “I’ve known you since the moment you took your first breath. I know why you helped that young woman. She made you think of your mom, and how she used to volunteer at our domestic violence center in Beacon County. She made you think of Issac Lahey, and how he deserved a champion against his own father. Please don’t forget everything you’ve accomplished, son. You gave her hope, Stiles, where she had none.”  


Melissa comes up behind his father, smiling softly at Stiles, and places one hand on Stiles’s shoulder, the other on his father's, making a chain. “Now, you can stay here as long as you want, as long as you need to get better. But I don’t want you staying here because you haven’t got the heart to move on from this. I may not have known Cathy, but I don’t think she would have wanted you to give up on your faith in the world. So don’t give up, son. You never have before.”

 

+++

Stiles parks at the end of the old gravel driveway and walk the rest of the way to the ruined Hale house. He hasn’t bothered to let Derek know he is coming, doesn’t need to, and sure enough, when he reaches the burned remains of the old house, Derek materializes like a ghost from the trees. He locks eyes with Stiles and smiles sadly. “Home sweet home,” he says. Stiles reaches out and squeezes his hand in solidarity. “I’m glad you came.”  


“I was promised answers,” Stiles replies.  


“Wait here,” Derek tells him when they've climbed the sagging porch steps, the only remaining sturdy structure after so many years spent rotting in the woods. Derek jumps down and rummages below the steps for a moment before returning with a large cardboard box that looks like it has seen better days. He opens it, and inside are hundreds of letters, tied together with fraying twine. Some are yellowed with age, their creases soft as old skin. Others are white and pristine. Some have been written on torn notebook paper, and others are written on quality stationery. Stiles counts ten bundles.  


“What are these?” Stiles asks, confused.  


“Letters. I wrote them to you. One bundle for each year I was gone,” Derek tells him.  


Stiles clutches the box to his chest, overwhelmed. Derek, whose primary language has always been scowling and complicated eyebrow maneuvers, had so much to say to him that he has written thousands of words in hundreds of letters? It is a palpable paradox. “I want to read all of them, every letter, right now.”  
Derek laughs fondly and pulls another missive out from his jacket pocket, edges of the paper tattered and worn, and hands it to Stiles. “They are yours. Read them all, but I want you to start with this one.”  


Stiles unfolds the letter with his heart in his throat and shaking hands. _Dear Stiles,_ it begins. _I write you letters I won't ever send._

+++

Some days, Derek brings the box of letters to Stiles’s house, and they lay, legs twining together, in his tiny childhood bed while he devours the contents of Derek’s heart. But most days, Stiles returns to the Hale property, sits on the dilapidated steps and reads for hours at a time, until the sun sets and fireflies dance in the yard.  


Derek leaves him to his perusal. Most days he fully shifts and runs the preserve, returning randomly throughout the day, barefoot and shirtless, black hair tangled with twigs. He bring Stiles small gifts: wildflowers and turtle shells, brightly colored bird feathers and interesting rocks.  


One day he shows up with a piece of fossilized wood that resembles a cartoon dog bone. Stiles throws it across the yard and yells, “Fetch!”  


Derek tackles him to the ground, laughing, and licks his face.

++++

They are laying on their backs together in the yard one afternoon, pointing out odd shaped clouds while Stiles takes a reading break. Birds are singing in the trees, and the sunshine has made him sleepy and drunk. It is the most peaceful and happy Stiles has felt in a long time. He turns his head, looks at Derek, squinting in the sunlight.  


“I’m just so glad you’re alive,” he tells him, apropos of nothing.  


Derek goes still in that supernatural way of his, his shoulder and arm a long, hard line against Stiles’s side. He smells like summer rain. Derek closes his eyes, reaching out blindly across the grass to grasp Stiles’s hand. “I almost lost you forever the night of the shooting. I couldn't get to you fast enough. I don’t want to let you out of my sight again. I don’t want to take the chance of losing you to some hideous accident, like I lost my family.” He turns his face toward Stiles, cheek resting against the soft green grass.  


“What happened that night, what happened to Cathy, that was no accident. Neither was what Kate did to your family. It was murder.”  


“Yes, it was murder, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was as much an accident as everything else life throws at people. The only part of my life that feels like destiny, and not some horrible accident, is you. You always gave me something to hold on to, an anchor to believe in.”  


These conversations they keep having everyday make Stiles’s heart race. They are still opening doors, edging forward, trying to find who they are now in relation to each other, as they did back when they were younger.  


“Do you want to stay here?” Stiles asks, half hopeful, half terrified. “Or is this place still too painful for you? Do you want to go home, see Cora?”  


“As long as we’re together, I don’t care where we go. We can return to San Francisco, or go to New York. Hell, I don’t care if you want to go to Australia. The place doesn’t matter. _You_ do. _You are home to me_.”  


“If we stay here, I have to find a new job. After Cathy, after seeing the freak show that was made of her funeral, I’m not sure if journalism is a profession I can stomach anymore. I have some ideas about what I might do, but I feel a little lost right now. It feels awfully daunting to start over at twenty-seven.”  


“Well, I believe in you. I never stopped believing in you. Take all the time you need to figure it out.” He is silent, and Stiles can read Derek’s trepidation in the furrow of his eyebrows.  


“What is it?” he asks.  


“If we stay here in Beacon Hills, there’s something I want to do, something I need to do. Things I need to put to rest.”  
“Anything I can do to help?”  


Derek squeezes his hand before letting go and vaulting gracefully to his feet. He reaches down and pulls Stiles up. “Just be there,” Derek replies.  


“I think I can manage that.”

 

++++

Stiles is helping Scott wash up in the kitchen after dinner, while the sheriff and Melissa, and Derek and Kira are in the living room, playing with Kami, Scott’s five-year-old daughter. She is regaling them with tales from her Girl Scout camp out.  


“We’re really happy you guys are staying,” Scott tells him.  


Stiles had a raise and promotion waiting for him back in San Francisco. He called his editor at the Chronicle this morning and told him he wasn’t returning.  


“Thanks, Scott, but I know it’s weird for you too, Derek and I being together after so long apart. It’s certainly thrown my father for a loop, though he tries to hide it.”  


Scott shrugs and rubs the dish towel over the plate Stiles hands him. “Ten years is a long time, is all. People change a lot in that amount of time. I just worry that you don’t really know him anymore. Derek’s essentially a stranger, now.”  


“Scott, I appreciate your concern, but Derek could never be a stranger to me, no matter how much time passes.”  


Scott puts the dried dish back in the cabinet. “There was always something between you two, a connection no one else could understand. What I don't get is how the guy could go ten years without a word, but like you said, you know him better than I ever could.”  


_There were words_ , Stiles thinks. _Thousands upon thousands of words. Years worth of conversations to fill the void. He just never sent them._  


“But I see it,” Scott continues, breaking into Stiles’s thoughts. “He’s got that Clint Eastwood look about him.” Scott is vaguely gesturing at his own face, scowling.  


“Dude, what the hell are you talking about? Derek looks nothing like Clint Eastwood.”  


“No, he doesn't look _like_ him, but he’s always had that face, ever since we were teenagers. When he levels a look at you, you can never tell if he's going to smile or take you by the throat.”  


Stiles laughs, knowing Derek is hearing this whole conversation with his wolf senses and probably rolling his eyes. “And you think his death glare attracted me?”  


Scott smiles. “You always were the one with the shitty ideas, Stiles. Let's go look for a dead body in the woods, let’s steal a police van, let’s date Derek Hale.”  


Stiles sprays him with the retractable nozzle, and the kitchen devolves into a war zone of puddles and bubbles. 

 

++++

 

Derek hires a crew of a dozen men to tear down the ruins of his family home. There isn't much of the structure left, so it is cleared out in a day. They dig away the foundation, and trucks bring in fresh soil to fill in the cellar where eight Hales needlessly lost their lives. That night, Stiles lingers in the darkness, standing vigil as Derek kneels in the pale moonlight, praying for everything he has lost, asking for forgiveness, blessing the hallow ground.  


He installs gravestones for each family member who died in the fire, one for Laura, and one for Boyd and Erica too. He surrounds them with a beautiful black wrought iron fence. When Stiles casually mentions Derek’s plan, the Stilinski’s and the McCall's insist on coming to support Derek once the project is finished.  


There is something niggling at the back of his mind, some piece of the picturesque scene they all make gathered in the private cemetery that does not make sense. Then he sees it, the twelfth gravestone. It is small, toward the back of the group and carved with an angel. Stiles feels his stomach go high and tight under his breastbone. He knows from all Derek has told him that there were children, some human, who died in the fire, so perhaps this grave is for one of them. But then he does the math in his head again, still coming up short. This seems to be an extra grave.  


He gently removes his arm from where it has been wrapped loosely around Derek’s waist, and heads over. The closer he gets, the more intricately beautiful the angel becomes, until he sees it fully, and the name engraved underneath it: _Cathy_.  


With a sharp intake of breath, Stiles reaches out and traces the letter with his fingertips. Behind him he can hear Kira humming Amazing Grace under her breath as she lays roses at the graves, and off to the side his father is praying softly. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”  


Derek walks up beside him. “Thank you,” is all Stiles can manage to say.  


“I wanted her to have a quiet, peaceful place,” Derek reasons, knowing the guilt Stiles carries, and will always carry, about Cathy’s death and the part he played in it, however good his intentions were. “I wanted you to have a place to come to, on the days it gets too hard to say good-bye.”  


It doesn't matter that there are no bodies resting in these graves. The Hale property is now unearthed, exhumed, prayed over and pronounced at peace.  


Kami darts between the stones, dancing and laughing, throwing flower petals into the wind. “I like that,” Derek says, as if hearing the musical sound for the very first time. “This places needs dancing and laughter, friends and family. Help me fill it with more good things.”  


Stiles looks over his shoulder at the gathered group as they lay flowers at the graves, paying their respects in their own private ways. They are a patchwork quilt of family woven together with blood and love, seams of faith, hope and forgiveness stitching them together, growing stronger every day.

 

++++

 

In July, Stiles accepts two jobs: freelance writing for the Beacon County Gazette, and teaching journalism and creative writing electives at Beacon Hills High School. His former Principal, Mr. Thomas, hires him.  


“Can you believe they trust _me_ to shape the minds of the future?” Stiles laughs hysterically. Derek looks like he is regretting all his life choices.  


In August, Stiles and Derek break ground on their new house. It's being built on Hale property in the preserve, a little ways away from the family cemetery.  


“Won’t it be creepy, living next to a graveyard?” Scott asks, hunching his shoulders up to his ears and making a pained face at the thought.  


“Nah,” Stiles tells him, truthfully. “I think it will be comforting for us both to have them so close by, even if only in spirit.”  


The crew that excavated the ruined remains of Derek’s former residence return to build them a new one. They bring in loads of lumber, electrical supplies, nails, screws, and concrete mix. They truck in high powered lights and work long into the evenings, and by Christmas the house is ready for them to move in.  


The completed structure is nothing like the original Hale mansion with its three sprawling stories. What they build is essentially a cabin, with a wide wrap around porch, and large windows to let in the light. Stiles’s favorite parts are the master bathroom, with it’s state of the art plumbing and huge tile shower big enough for two, and the large kitchen at the back of the house that overlooks their cemetery.  


In a stroke of ill fortune, on the morning of their big move-in day the clouds are pregnant with rain. They are just unloading the last of their belongings from the moving van when thunder rumbles and the sky breaks. They are drenched in seconds.  


“Nothing is ever easy for us, is it?” Stiles laughs, handing Derek the last box.  


“Get in the house, Stiles. It would be just your luck to get struck by lightning.”  


They slide into the foyer, dripping water onto the new hardwood floor. With the front door still standing open, they peel the wet clothes from each other bodies, warming rain damp skin with hands and mouths, and make love on the entryway floor.  


Stiles looks down, curves a hand around Derek's handsome face, slack with pleasure, feathering his fingers over Derek’s mouth. “Well, here we are,” he whispers. “Welcome home.”  


The life they have now is rich and full, and for the first time, Stiles feels grateful for the passage of time. Derek’s eyes glimmer and he laughs hoarsely, reaching up to kiss Stiles, the missing years shifting and fading, the future sweet as sugar between their tongues. 

 

++++

Stiles is covering the Beacon Hills New Year’s parade, aptly named _First Night_ , for the Gazette. It’s the biggest parade of the year, drawing thousands of people to the town square to wander around craft tents and food vendors. He knows how much Derek dislikes crowds, and offers to go alone, but Derek insists on tagging along. Since Cora is coming to visit for the first time tomorrow, Stiles is doubly surprised Derek wants to go.  


It is a chilly fifty-five degrees, but the sheer amount of bodies along the sidewalks, and Derek at his side, keep him warm. Kira spots them, and waves them over to where she and Scott are standing. “Here Stiles, stand here,” she directs him, shuffling aside to make room. He glances up and down the street while Derek settles in directly behind him, greeting Scott.  


“Wow, Kira. You just gave up prime parade watching real estate to me and I didn’t even have to bribe you with a bottle of wine. Are you feeling okay?”  


She smiles at him, face deceptively placid, and motions to the state of the art digital camera hanging around his neck. “I just want you to get a good shot of Kami marching in the parade in her girl scout uniform, and include it with your write up in the newspaper.”  


The parade starts to creep forward. The high school band marches past, playing _Auld Lang Syne_. Volunteer firefighters walk by, throwing candy to children in the crowd. Melissa and his father appear behind Scott and Kira. Melissa reaches up to kiss his cheek, and the sheriff clasps both Stiles and Derek on the shoulders.  


“Here they come,” Scott says, as Kami and her Daisy girlscout crew come into view. There are twenty sweet faced, five-year-old girls, white daisies woven into their pig-tails. Stiles raises his camera and snaps a few precious pictures. He will have no trouble convincing his editor to include them with his write-up.  


Just as he lowers his camera, the parade comes to a stop, and the twenty girls turn to face Stiles, staring and giggling at him, Derek, the Stilinskis and the McCalls. Startled, Stiles leans back into Derek’s firm chest. “They know I’m just a journalist, and not a secret parade judge, right?” he jokes. The music comes to a stop.  


“Shh,” Derek whispers, sounding fondly exasperated. Stiles turns and gapes at him, sees conspiracy gleaming in his eyes. He looks at his family, blanketing him on both sides. Conspiracy. He turns back to Kami, who waves at him with a badass smirk and mouths ‘Hi Uncle Stiles’. Conspiracy.  


The Daisies scurry around, bumping into each other until they are arranged in a straight line facing Stiles and Derek. Small hands dive inside the front pockets of their blue smocks and pull out white cards printed with blocky black letters.  


They hold up their signs, and there it is, printed out for Stiles, his dad, Melissa, Scott, Kira, and the whole world to see. 

_STILES, WILL YOU MARRY ME?_

Stiles twists in Derek’s hold, looking into his face. He sees so much joy, so much beauty, superimposed over a hundred other mental images he has of Derek, over memories good and bad, bitter and sweet. For a man so private and reclusive, to make such a bold public declaration, the happy shock of it takes Stiles’s breath away.  


“You read all my other letters,” Derek says, as if reading his mind, “I thought we could share this one with everybody else.”  


He unwinds Derek’s arms from his shoulders and walks out into the street. He taps shoulders and rearranges adorable kindergartners, turning some of their flashcards to the blank side.  


When he finishes, he is dimly aware of the laughter and applause from the crowd around them, but he is riveted to the wonderful expression on Derek’s face as he reads the reconfigured message. It’s a beautiful view.

 _I WILL MARRY YOU_

The band starts up again, playing a song that is lilting and sweet, and Stiles steps back into the shelter and strength of Derek’s arms, where he belongs.  


“I’m going to be a flower girl!” Kami shrieks to her troop members as they skip away.  


“Nice editing, Mr. S.!” One of his journalism students from the marching band calls out, giving him a thumbs up.  


A firefighter throws a piece of candy, and accidentally hits Stiles in the head.  


“I love you,” he tells Derek. “ I love our life, our family, our pack. I love that we found each other again. Everything is perfect.”  


Derek leans forward and kisses him. They break apart and smile at each other without a shred of dignity.  


“It is,” he agrees. “Now, let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm [Jamie](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/jmeelee), come visit me on tumblr


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